The greater hurrah

The great hurrah about wild animals is that they exist at all, and the greater hurrah is the actual moment of seeing them. Because they have a nice dignity, and prefer to have nothing to do with me, not even as the simple objects of my vision. They show me by their very wariness what a prize it is simply to open my eyes and behold.

- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

I've already mentioned that I spent some time at Wallaby Creek collecting wildlife data, and I've already mentioned that there was a also fellow from my University there undertaking a mammal survey, for his own Honours. So, one day, during a field trip, as I was wandering about the valley after kangaroos, my "colleague" (I'll just call him my friend from here on) was coming down the hill from the forest where he had been clearing small mammal (Elliot) traps.

As he went by he sung out "come back to the hut and I'll show you a bush rat". I thought to myself 'whatever, I've seen a thousand bush rats' (pictured above) so I took my time getting there.

When I finally made my way back to the hut, my friend fiddled about in preparation and then pulled the head of a creature out of a bag. I looked at its face and exclaimed "that's not a bush rat!". He then pulled its tail out of the bag, and I said "is that a ...?" - at which point I think there might have been a little of a kind of whooping dance around the hut. This is what he'd caught:

If you have no idea what that is, that is because it is one of NSW's threatened species, currently listed at vulnerable. And if you think you've ever seen one before then you'd better go down to your nearest National Parks and Wildlife Service and tell them so. It's a Brush-tailed Phascogale (pictured in a cat trap, not an Elliot trap - it's important to know your traps!). But before you remark "oh, it's so cute" let me warn you that this seemingly harmless, sweet little thing was once known as the "marsupial vampire". (Now I may have come under some Gothic influence of late, but I'm not making this up - see here and here.) That's because it is a carnivorous little beast capable of bringing down a farmyard hen.

I've mentioned already that my colleague removed a snake from under my bed in blase fashion (pictured below). Well, the next thing he did (besides daring me to ride a horse bare-back) is say "well, hopefully I'll catch more of these so it'd be good to know what their bite is like" and promptly offered this creature his hand - before I could do anything to stop him! So our little vampire latched onto this offered hand - as he hollered - and there it stayed. As my friend jigged around sucking his breath in, with this furry little creature attached, he spat out "it's worse than a budgie!". A budgie??!! I could hardly do anything useful for laughing. Eventually I had to get two wooden pencils (because we didn't actually want to harm our friendly little vampire's teeth) into this creatures mouth and prise its jaw open, so my friend could reclaim his hand. Guess he knew for next time.

Back at uni, when he was telling people how I went on this wild bare-back horse ride, just because he told me to, I'd tell people that he fed his hand to a phascogale. Who wins?